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Epilogue

There were people in Heathrow Arrivals hall watching and Tom didn’t care. Scooping up the boy who came running, he hugged Charlie so tightly that Charlie looked momentarily worried, then grinned and hugged him back. As Tom gripped his son, he thought of a lake in Cumbria, and a young girl who’d popped up beside him wanting to borrow binoculars. He could still remember the scream that the sight of her grandfather’s exploding boat had dragged from her body.

He hugged his son tighter.

‘I thought you were in Berlin,’ Charlie said.

‘I was,’ Tom told him.

‘Then why did we meet a Moscow plane?’

‘It’s complicated.’

‘That’s what Mummy said.’

‘How is she?’

‘Tired …’ Charlie hesitated, the first part of his conversation not yet finished. Charlie liked maps. He particularly liked that the world was a spherical jigsaw made of countries. He consulted his mental map and looked puzzled. ‘Isn’t it longer to fly from Berlin via Moscow?’

‘Yes,’ said Tom. ‘But sometimes simpler.’

‘Who was the lady?’ asked Charlie.

‘Woman,’ Charlie’s grandfather corrected. ‘Unless she has a title.’ He caught Tom’s stare and shrugged, looking almost apologetic. ‘Caro would have corrected him,’ he offered as a defence.

‘A friend of mine. Amelia. She studies wolves.’

Charlie’s eyes widened. ‘Does she keep them as pets?’

‘I’m not sure wolves would make good pets.’

‘Is she Russian?’

‘Scottish,’ Tom said.

Charlie looked disappointed. Then he brightened. ‘Wax Angel says I must stay with her in Moscow. Next holiday. If that’s all right with you. She says I’m very good at picking locks. Many of her friends are good at picking locks too.’

Lord Eddington gave Tom a pointed stare.

‘I brought you a present,’ Tom said, ignoring his father-in-law. He held out a toy car bought in Moscow airport, and watched Charlie’s face light up.

‘It’s a jeep,’ Charlie said.

‘It’s a Soviet UAZ-3151.’

‘It looks like a jeep.’

‘Better not tell the Russians that. And I brought Grandpa this.’

Lord Eddington took the toy Trabant and examined it quizzically.

Around them, passengers flowed into the Arrivals hall and shook the hands of their drivers or fell into the arms of their families. And Tom stood in his little huddle, away to one side, with the son he wasn’t sure he still had until Maya Milova, whom he still thought of as Wax Angel, telephoned to tell him that Charlie was safe.

‘Its windows are missing.’

‘They weren’t very well fixed.’

The microfiche had burnt nicely on the floor of the cage he’d shared with Amelia, while the old wolf was finishing its meal. Duty to Eddington, and promises to Marshal Milov apart, Tom owed Wax Angel that.

‘A souvenir from Berlin?’

‘A memento.’

‘Thank you, Tom.’ Eddington glanced to where Charlie raced his Soviet jeep along the back of a bench, which was thankfully unoccupied. ‘I realize there should be a proper inquest into Patroclus,’ he said. ‘I accept that. And I’d like to be able to tell you that there will be, but …’

‘But what?’ Tom said.

‘The main players are dead. And the Prime Minister is keen to avoid any suggestion of scandal. Its files are now classified.’

‘Under the thirty-year rule?’

‘Sevent—’ Eddington stopped.

That was how Tom knew that Charlie was back. So Tom asked Caro’s father the only question that really mattered anyway. ‘How is she?’

‘Caro? As well as can be expected,’ Eddington said carefully.

‘What about … C. H. E. M. O?’

‘They can’t do that again yet,’ Charlie said. ‘Can they, Grandpa?’

His grandfather smiled sadly. Gesturing towards the exit, he said, ‘In a few weeks perhaps. We should go. Mummy’s expecting us.’

Amelia Blackburn was standing beside Lord Eddington’s Range Rover, her expression unreadable. That was her default, Tom realized. Some people smiled, some frowned, others scowled. Her face revealed nothing.

‘I thought that this might be yours,’ she said.

Lord Eddington looked at her. ‘What made you think that?’

‘I guessed.’

‘You’re the wolf woman,’ Charlie said.

Amelia’s eyes widened.

‘I told him you liked wolves,’ Tom said hastily.

‘I watch them,’ Amelia said. ‘Study how they behave. Did your dad tell you we saw some?’

‘Really?’ Charlie sounded excited.

‘Can I help you?’ Lord Eddington asked.

Digging into her pocket, Amelia produced the envelope she’d wanted Tom to post and that he’d later returned to her. ‘You may want to give this to the Chief Scientific Officer,’ she said. ‘It’s a copy of a first-hand report from Chernobyl. Don’t worry, it’s not radioactive. But you can tell him the person who wrote it died within a day. It has details, data. Your government has no idea what happened there. It’s probably best you do. That way you can stop it happening here.’

‘You sound like one of those women from Greenham Common.’

‘I am one of those women from Greenham Common.’

‘If you’d excuse me, sir?’ Tom said.

He led Amelia to one side, aware that his father-in-law and his son were watching, and that Amelia wasn’t the sort of person you lead.

‘For all you know he’ll simply sit on it.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘He’ll show it to the CSO, then sit on it.’

‘And that doesn’t worry you?’

‘It’s one copy,’ she said. ‘I’ve made others.’

A tug disturbed Tom’s sleeve. And he wrapped his arm round Charlie’s shoulders and felt the small boy lean into him. ‘Grandpa says that we should probably go now.’

‘I hope your mum feels better,’ Amelia said.

‘I do too.’ He looked at her, wide-eyed. ‘You really saw wolves?’

‘Lots of wolves.’ She dropped to his level, grunted slightly.

‘Are you all right?’ Charlie sounded worried.

‘A bad man shot me.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘The wolves ate him for me.’

Charlie’s eyes widened. ‘They ate him?’

‘He was a very bad man,’ Amelia said. ‘Very bad indeed.’

Charlie thought about it. ‘I like wolves,’ he said. And Tom knew he meant it. His son’s mind had been made up on the subject of wolves. He would like them for life. ‘I need to go now though,’ Charlie said.

He put his hand out.

‘I’m Charlie Fox,’ he said politely. ‘Bye bye.’

1

April 1972

It began as a Swallows and Amazons sort of day.

The lake was calm and the wind warm. It was too early in the year for that many tourists and most of those walking the hills or along the lakeshore were second-home owners. The locals were busy running pubs and village shops or working on the hill farms that characterized this part of the Lake District. The old man heading for the lake, with his grandchildren straggling like ducks behind him, was staying in a grey stone house overlooking the shore.

It was to be a wet summer. So wet it would spawn headlines that screamed flood, and showed photographs of holidaymakers huddling on beaches under umbrellas. No one knew that yet. So far the weather was mild, the papers taken up with inflation and, for the man walking down to the dinghy, it was a year like any other.

He was in the autumn of his life.

Famous, successful, quietly rich and widely respected.

He’d had a good war, gone into politics for lack of anything more interesting, and had taken his place in the Lords when his father died. He now sat in opposition to Callaghan’s government, but was known to be moderate. An old-school Tory in the proper sense of that word. Much loved was the phrase mostly used about him.

‘Me,’ said a small boy following.

‘No,’ another said, more loudly. ‘My turn.’

He turned back, remembering to frown, and the five children came to an abrupt halt. They had orders to behave. Mummy had been firm about that. If Grandpa let them sail with him, they were to behave. It was only the third day of the Easter holidays and they didn’t want to upset him, did they?

The man up on the hill with the binoculars watched them stop and wondered at the neatness of their world.

They could have wandered out of a children’s book or one of those Sunday afternoon BBC serials. He’d had four days to set this up and had been in place before the family arrived. When the old man pointed at himself and then at the smaller boat, before pointing at the rest of them and indicating the larger one, the man in the hills crossed himself.

The youngest of Lord Brannon’s grandchildren looked about five, his oldest no more than fourteen. He could remember being that age but not that innocent.

Down on the lake’s edge the children were laughing and shrieking at the coldness of the water as they struggled to push the larger of the boats into the lake. And the old man grinned, and tried not to show how hard he found the work, as he came alongside to help.

Knee-deep, and apparently not feeling the cold, he pushed them off and shouted orders that had the girl scrabbling for the rudder, while one of the boys raised a sail that caught the wind and – with the help of a brutal yank on the tiller – swung them towards the middle of the lake. The boat leant, the girl kept her line true and a spreading wake showed that the dinghy was picking up speed. The old man smiled to see them go.

Then he pushed his own, much smaller, dinghy into deeper water.

He stopped for a second to watch his grandchildren disappearing into the distance. On the terrace above, a woman came out of the house, saw the dinghy heading towards the middle of the lake and called to her husband, who came through the French windows, looked at the vanishing boat, shrugged and laughed.

Up on the hill, the man turned his field glasses back to his lordship, whose dinghy was now making for a tiny island with a single –

‘What are you doing?’ said a voice behind him.

The girl was young, ten, maybe eleven, and had her bottom lip stuck out as if he’d surprised her in the middle of a sulk; rather than her surprising him. He glanced towards the dinghies. They were still within reach.

‘Birdwatching.’

She looked contemptuous.

‘Don’t you like birds?’

She looked ready to say she hated them. Then honesty got the better of her. ‘Some of them. My great-aunt has a parakeet. It’s old and manky and it swears. She hates it.’

‘Why keep it then?’

‘It was Great-Uncle Robert’s. That means she can’t get rid of it.’ The girl looked at the man with the binoculars and shrugged as if to say she didn’t expect that to make sense to him either. ‘Can I borrow those?’

‘I’m using them.’

Sucking her teeth, she said, ‘They left me behind for being naughty. That’s why I’m not out there.’

‘They’re your family?’

She nodded slowly, took a step backwards, then another, and he wondered if his voice had been strange. He could still reach her if she made a run for it. Break her neck before she had time to ruin everything.

‘I never had a family,’ he said.

She stopped backing away, torn between trying to look sympathetic and obvious envy at his being family-free. It was a lie, of course. But it did the trick. The moment had gone and everything was reset.

‘I’d better go,’ she said.

He nodded.

Distance was critical to what came next. The man in the hills had spent the last three days establishing the family’s routine. He already knew that Lord Brannon sailed alone if possible, used the smaller dinghy from choice and shared it reluctantly. In London, he might have a bodyguard who checked under his car each morning, but his bodyguard wasn’t here, and even if he had been, he might not have thought to check under the dinghy’s simple seat.

The sky was blue, the sun was bright, and the breeze was warm.

All things the papers would mention when they came to write tomorrow’s headlines. Opening his rucksack, the man in the hills found the little black box he’d been promised would work. He turned a switch that he’d been told to turn, lifted a protective cover and pushed a button.

Out on the water a fireball blossomed.

The explosion was so loud that crows rose from trees right along the lake’s edge. Fragments of the dinghy cartwheeled into the air and for a split second there was a red mist, instantly swallowed in a fireball, pieces of dinghy falling in flat splashes. The old man was gone; ripped apart so savagely his coffin needed bricks to make up the weight.

3

1986, US Naval Base, Guantánamo, Cuba

The boy looked at the sign with its skull and crossbones and large red letters announcing ‘Danger! Mines’, then at the rusting razor wire. He was eight, almost. Old enough to do this.

One roll of the wire had come away.

If he turned sideways he could squeeze between it and its post without doing more than scratch his wrist. Sucking at the blood, he turned his attention to the minefield in front of him. It looked bigger now he was standing on its edge.

Stepping forward, he froze as dirt sunk beneath his feet, unfreezing when he realized he’d crushed an ants’ nest. He chose his next step more carefully, welcoming the feel of solid earth. Mines were round and made from metal. They contained explosives. Their top plates gave when you trod on them. That was what tripped the detonator. Detonators made them blow up.

He knew these things.

Solid earth was good. Solid earth was safe.

In the distance a thick wall of prickly pears marked the border between where he stood and a different world.

The sun was hot and his mouth dry.

Very carefully, the boy looked at the dust around his feet, noticing rough grass and dead patches of thistle. The sun was so hot that the earth had split and a riverbed was now dry pebbles, with an iridescent lizard basking on a rock in the middle. It flicked its tail and vanished when he went to take a look.

The boy bit his lip.

He knew he shouldn’t be here.

Yesterday he’d seen big signs that said anybody crossing the minefield would be shot. Taking another step, the boy looked for a step after that, lifted his foot and changed his mind at the last second.

His shoe caught something and he shut his eyes.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven …

He could stop counting now. Scraping the dirt with his shoe, he found the rusting rim of what looked like a Coke can. Painted green. He’d expected the mines to be round like a plate. Maybe some were, and others looked like this.

‘Come on,’ he told himself.

At this speed he’d be here tomorrow.

The wall of cactus in the distance looked no closer; and, even if he ran, the field would take ages to cross. He stared at the dirt in front of him, then at the scrub in front of that. He noticed dead patches, spider cracks in the earth, sickly clumps of grass.

When he started again it was at a trot.

‘Charlie …’

The boy froze at the sound of his name.

When he turned it was reluctantly. A US Army jeep had screeched to a halt by the sign and soldiers were tumbling out, clutching rifles. One of them screamed at him not to move. Another screamed at his father, who began pushing between razor wire and post, ignoring the blood that began to flow from his hip.

‘Charlie,’ he shouted.

The small boy looked from the prickly pears in the distance to his father, who was trying to work out where to put his feet. Charlie’s father stared at the ground, swallowed and began walking.

‘Stop,’ Charlie shouted.

His father froze, his foot a few inches above what he had to realize was a mine.

‘To the left,’ Charlie shouted. ‘My left.’

His father hesitated.

‘Your right.’

Daddy put his foot down and his relief was visible. Behind him the soldiers had stopped shouting and a second jeep had parked behind the first. Mummy sat in the front. He hoped she wouldn’t be cross with him in public. She probably would. She often was.

‘Stay there,’ Charlie told his father.

‘Slowly,’ his father shouted.

Charlie kept walking at the same pace.

He could have reached the prickly pears too. He knew that now.

Once you worked out where to put your feet, it was easy. Maybe not at all times of the year, but now when the sun was high and the afternoon so hot he could feel sweat running down his back. Although that might be the thought of being in trouble. He wasn’t always good at knowing when he was in trouble.

‘Look for cracks that go both ways,’ Charlie said.

Daddy stared at him.

‘And sickly grass. That’s how you know where mines are. The rest of it’s fine, although anthills feel a bit …’ He searched for the word, failing to find it. ‘Not safe,’ he said finally. ‘Everything else is good.’

‘Step where I step,’ he added.

Before Daddy could open his mouth to object, Charlie edged around him and took slow slides so his father could see where to put his feet.

It was further to the wire than he expected, which meant he’d done better than he imagined. By the time they reached it, American soldiers in thick gloves were lifting razor wire aside to let them though.

‘Those must be hot.’

The soldier looked at Charlie, nodded.

Major Tom Fox dropped to a crouch in front of his eight-year-old son. He knew the American soldiers were listening. That whatever Charlie said would get back to the base commander.

‘Why did you ignore the sign?’

‘I wanted a prickly pear.’

Tom Fox looked at the small boy, who looked at the ground, his bottom lip folded in where he chewed it. Blonde, blue-eyed and fair-skinned, Charlie took after his mother in looks. Tom wasn’t sure who he took after in temperament. He waited for Charlie to say more and realized that was it.

‘You wanted a prickly pear?’

The boy turned and pointed into the distance. ‘See,’ he said. ‘Over there. There’s a whole wall of them.’

‘There’s a prickly pear by our bungalow.’

‘It says, “Do not pick”. There’s a sign.’

‘There’s a sign there,’ Tom said. ‘It says “Danger! Mines”.’

‘But it doesn’t say you can’t go in and it doesn’t say don’t pick the prickly pears. It doesn’t. Does it?’

Wrapping his arm around his son’s shoulder, Tom steered him back to Caro, who watched Charlie approach with something resembling resignation. As he did so, a slightly pudgy American in dark glasses and a Hawaiian shirt clambered from the second jeep and asked if he could talk to the English boy.

Tom nodded.

Dropping to a crouch, the man asked Charlie how he’d known where to put his feet and listened carefully as Charlie explained about cracks in the dirt, weak grass and dead patches. ‘Could you get to the other side?’

Charlie’s mother opened her mouth to object.

‘I’m not saying he should,’ the man said. ‘In fact, he very definitely shouldn’t. I want to know if he could if he had to.’

‘Of course,’ Charlie said.

‘Interesting. You and I should talk sometime.’ The man held out his hand. ‘I’m Felix,’ he said. ‘Felix Propotsky.’

‘Charlie,’ the small boy said. ‘Charlie Fox.’

‘I know,’ Felix said. ‘I’ve worked with your father.’

Charlie and his father had finished a burger each, eaten a portion of fries between them and shared a chocolate shake thick enough to be liquid concrete, and cold enough to make their teeth hurt. Then they transferred to Baskin-Robbins for an ice cream, and were sitting under a red umbrella outside when Felix pulled up in a jeep, jumped out, and nodded at an empty chair. He took Tom’s silence as permission and sat opposite Charlie.

‘Eat up,’ he said. ‘It’ll melt.’

‘Too late,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s melted already.’

Felix peered into the cardboard cup, reached for Charlie’s plastic spoon and stirred a couple of colours together.

‘You finished with this?’

Charlie nodded.

When Felix had finished spooning melted ice cream into his mouth, he dug into his trouser pockets and pulled out a padlock with one side cut away, and a little leather case that zipped up the side.

‘A present,’ he said.

Taking the lock, Charlie examined it carefully, angling the cut-away bit into the sun to examine a row of spring-loaded pins that kept its clasp shut. When he unzipped the leather case Tom had a feeling his son had already worked out what he’d find. Although he probably didn’t expect to find so many.

‘Overkill,’ Felix said. ‘I usually use these.’ He pulled out a pick that turned up at one end, a rake with four sharp bumps like a little mountain range, and what looked like a pair of bent tweezers. ‘That’s a torsion bar,’ he said.

He lined them up in front of Charlie.

Before he could say anything else, Charlie put the strangely angled end of the tweezers into the key shot, turned it to put pressure on the lock’s cylinder, and began raking at the pins with the pick that had four bumps.

‘Slowly,’ Felix said. ‘And put the rake in first, then the torsion bar. Look at how those pins are arranged. You can’t work the first pin if you put the rake in second.’

Swapping them round, Charlie raked the pick slowly back and smiled as the pins aligned inside, the cylinder turned and the lock sprung open with a satisfying click. ‘That’s all I need,’ Tom said.

‘Keep them,’ Felix said.

Charlie looked shocked. ‘Really?’

‘Empty your head when you do it. Preferably think about something else entirely. Even better, think about nothing.’

As Tom watched, his son shut the padlock, reached for the odd-looking tweezers and upturned pick, turned the cylinder until the pins pushed against the shafts that held them, and very carefully began to move one up and down. He looked happier than Tom had seen him in a long while.

4

‘Ready?’ Felix shouted.

Charlie tried to keep his skis together and the rope in place and nodded, although he wasn’t ready, not really.

‘You have to say ready.’

The boy stared at Felix’s speedboat just off the rocky beach.

‘You have to say ready,’ Felix said. ‘And when you’re really ready, you have to say hit it. That tells me it’s time to open the throttle. The acceleration will pull you upright. The secret is to –’

‘Keep your legs straight,’ Charlie called.

Felix laughed. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s try it again.’

The boy angled his skis, until just the tips jutted above the waves rolling in from the Caribbean, and felt Felix nudge the boat forward to take up the slack. Charlie knew his mother and father were watching, even though they had promised they wouldn’t.

‘Ready?’ Felix shouted.

‘Ready,’ Charlie shouted back, meaning it this time.

He looked at the shiny black outboard engine, and decided it was one of the coolest things he’d seen. One of the most powerful too, if Felix could be believed, and he probably could. Felix was a bit like Charlie.

Charlie didn’t know how to lie either.

‘Okay,’ he shouted, which wasn’t in the script. ‘Hit it.’

And hit it Felix did.

The huge outboard chewed water fast enough to push Felix back in his seat and jerk Charlie upright as the boat rocketed out into the bay, substantially faster than the signs on shore allowed. ‘Relax,’ Felix shouted.

Charlie tried really hard.

He hit a wave, almost lost his skis and found himself still standing, his arms stretched in front of him, fingers gripping the handle and the rope taut right the way to the speedboat beyond. He tried to remember the diagrams Felix had drawn on the back of an old envelope.

Leaning back countered a boat’s forward thrust.

Gravity wanted you to sink. The speed of the boat prevented that.

Downward thrust could be countered by upward thrust. If those were in balance you were fine for going in a straight line. If you crossed the wake then centripetal force came into play. Charlie liked the sound of that and decided it was probably time he had a go. Keep the rope taut, Felix had said.

That was the key to everything.

‘Tom …’

Tom looked up from his Washington Post to where his son jumped the wake like a professional, running out as wide as the rope would allow, cutting a wave of spray before racing back through the middle to do it all over again on the far side.

‘We’re not meant to be watching,’ he said.

His wife smiled. ‘He doesn’t care if we’re watching.’

‘We promised we wouldn’t.’

‘That was when he wasn’t sure he could do it.’

‘If you’re sure?’ Tom said.

Caro looked at her husband more fondly than she had for a while, and raised her rum and coke in a salute. The little paper umbrella it arrived with was resting on the side. ‘Believe me,’ she said. ‘He wants us to watch.’

So Tom did. He watched his son jump the wake time and again, until the boy looked rock solid in the turns, and his perfectly executed fountains of spray had others on the beach looking up.

‘What now?’ Caro asked.

Instead of sweeping out to the far side, Charlie had stopped in the middle, arms out and rope taut. He stayed like this until Felix looked back to see what was happening. Dropping one hand, Charlie tapped his leg.

Felix pumped one fist in the air.

As the boat ran in a circle back to the beach, Charlie suddenly shot out to the far side, swept back across his own wake and, as if aiming for Caro and Tom, kicked off one ski that surfed in towards them.

And that was when he lost his balance.

‘Christ,’ Tom said. He was up and headed for the water, then waist-deep and already striding out, heart tight, when Charlie surfaced. It took Tom a moment to realize his son was laughing.

He’d lost his other ski and his trunks were dangerously low; something he realized with a start, dragging them up and glaring in case anybody had noticed. ‘I’ll get it right next time,’ he shouted.

‘Who taught you?’ Tom shouted back.

‘Felix. It’s physics. Easy really.’

Then he trekked off towards his missing ski, which had beached in front of an American service family having a picnic on the largest blanket Tom had seen. A dark-skinned girl Charlie’s age looked up. She wore an Alice band and a swimsuit fluorescent enough to be seen from space. Whatever she said, Charlie dropped to a crouch, joining her on the blanket when she shuffled up to make space for him.

‘Don’t worry,’ Caro said. ‘They’ll send him back when they get bored. Do you want the other half?’

Tom’s rum and coke was blood-warm and attracting wasps. Its slice of lemon had wilted along the edge. He shook his head.

‘I’ll get you a beer.’

‘A coke is fine.’

‘I’ll get you both.’ Her hand rested briefly on his shoulder, and Tom leant his head into it, realizing that Charlie was watching from the blanket.

The boy’s eyes were huge and his face serious.

‘He’s scared,’ Caro said.

‘Of me?’ Tom tried not to sound shocked.

‘For you. For me. That it will all go wrong again. They hear things at that age. You know. They see things …’

Tom wanted to ask what things.

What things did Charlie see in the months before their teenage daughter put her Mini into a tree? … What did he hear in the months his parents twisted their marriage to the edge of destruction? The accident. That was how Tom was teaching himself to think of it.

Becca’s accident.

She’d put her little Mini into a tree.

At 80 mph, on a clear night, on a straight, dry road. She’d been pregnant. Her boyfriend hadn’t been the father. Those were the things Tom wasn’t meant to think. Those were facts he was teaching himself to wall away.

What exactly did Charlie overhear?

He’d ask Caro, but she was already at a shack run by a Cuban who’d had the job before Castro took over. That’s how it worked. None of the Cubans working on the base could be replaced. All those who’d had jobs got to keep them.

‘I know,’ Caro said, on her return, ‘that we should let the past go. But I’m going to say something. Not for your sake. For mine. I want it off my chest.’

She scowled as he glanced at her.

‘Behave for a second.’

Her swimsuit was Italian and flattered her figure, which was good enough not to need flattering. She’d always been well dressed.

Being independently wealthy helped.

‘What are you thinking?’

‘About your money.’

‘I thought that didn’t worry you.’

‘It doesn’t,’ Tom said. ‘I was just thinking you’ve always looked …’ He hesitated. ‘Like you. Yourself.’

‘While you, it turns out, have been half a dozen different people in the last ten years. And I haven’t known about any of them. Was it hard? Being undercover?’

Of course it was hard, he wanted to say.

If he never went back to Northern Ireland that would be fine.

Military Intelligence, via the priesthood. It wasn’t an obvious career path. He was good at it, though, being undercover, inhabiting other people’s lives. It was coming back to his own that had given him problems.

Reaching for his beer, Tom smiled as Charlie looked round and waved to see him watching. He was digging a trench with the girl with the Alice band and laughing as waves swept over his toes.

‘Look. He’s made a friend.’

‘Tom …’ Caro said.

He knew it wasn’t going to be good.

‘In Moscow you told me you’d been sleeping with other women. I knew. A woman always does. We’re better at that than men. How many?’

‘A handful,’ said Tom, watching the horizon.

‘A handful five or six? Or a handful fifteen, twenty?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘How many?’ Caro demanded.

And before he could answer, she added. ‘I loved you, you know. Right from the beginning. It wasn’t a game for me. I didn’t set out to ruin your life. I was young, very young. But I still wouldn’t have –’

‘You didn’t ruin my life.’

‘Yes, I did. You’d probably be teaching History at Ampleforth, collecting T. S. Eliot first editions and going for walks over hills. You’d wear tatty coats, and the boys would be slightly afraid of you and secretly fond. You’d have been ordained –’

‘And ended up drunk or defrocked, losing my faith and intoning empty words to a congregation of passing tramps who smelt of piss and only came for the heating. Anyway,’ said Tom, ‘I was ordained.’

‘In the Church of England. Your being a major’s my fault too.’

‘Caro … What’s going on?’

Her face was paler than he remembered, her cheeks hollow. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m just having a bad time of it.’

‘Seven,’ Tom said. ‘I think seven.’

‘Think seven lovers. Might have been eight or nine?’

‘Think seven. Might have been six.’

‘Did any of them matter?’

‘One, maybe. She was kind.’

‘Oh God,’ Caro said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.’

‘Caro. This is –’

‘Unlike me? Heavy tears expected. Gusts of emotion. Possible outbreaks of guilt later. That was a Caro weather warning.’

Knocking back her drink, she held up her glass and the Cuban in the shack raised his hand to say he understood.

‘I’ll take Charlie for a walk. If you want a rest later.’

‘You don’t want to have a rest with me?’

Their son was laughing with his new friend, both of them sticky with dried salt from their doomed efforts to build a wall big enough to hold back the Caribbean. He’d made a friend and Charlie never made friends.

‘Does he look like he’s going to rest?’ Tom asked.

Caro took the question seriously. ‘He’ll either keep going all afternoon or fall over suddenly, get tearful and want quiet time to himself.’

‘Maybe I should take them both for a hamburger.’

‘Are you going for sainthood?’

‘No,’ Tom said. ‘Just trying to make amends.’

‘No need. But if you’re serious about taking Charlie off my hands …’

She stood up, let her hand brush Tom’s shoulder and hesitated.

‘I haven’t said what I was going to say. I’m having an affair. Long term and nobody you know. The stupid thing is that under other circumstances you’d really like him. I’ll finish it the moment we get home …’

5

Hotel Splendide, Grand Bahamas

‘You okay?’ Caro asked.

‘I’m fine,’ Tom replied.

Her face tightened and Charlie put down his lock and picks and stared miserably at his flying fish. Without thinking, he pushed his plate away.

‘Too much sun,’ Tom said. ‘Sorry.’

‘Really?’ Caro said. ‘You have a headache?’

Dipping for her bag, she extracted a packet of Anadin, popped two through the foil and pushed them across, sliding Tom’s water glass towards him.

He swallowed them dutifully.

‘Sorry,’ Tom said. He was looking at Charlie.

His son shrugged, remembered his manners and said he hated headaches too. He hoped Daddy would get better soon. The boy had been miserable since they landed in the Grand Bahamas that morning. He was missing the girl he’d met at the American base in Guantánamo. Tom’s joke about almost eight being too early to have his heart broken hadn’t helped.

‘You could always write to Anna,’ he suggested.

Charlie looked up from his plate. ‘I don’t have her address.’

‘I’ll get it for you.’

‘Really? You promise?’

‘You find a postcard in the hotel shop, Mummy will buy it and a stamp, and I’ll have Anna’s address for you by tomorrow.’

Charlie attacked his flying fish.

‘I’m going for a walk in a while,’ Tom said. ‘Anyone want to come?’

‘Not me,’ said Caro. ‘I need to wash my hair.’

As outrageous a lie as Tom had heard. He doubted she’d ever washed her own hair, except perhaps at university or boarding school.

‘You go,’ Caro told Charlie.

The night was hot and the beach deserted. Palm trees overhung the sand on one side, and the sea lapped the shoreline a few paces to the other. Tom and Charlie walked along a strip of fading light while stars came out overhead and yachts glittered out on the water.

‘What do you want to talk about?’ Charlie asked.

‘Charlie …’

The boy shrugged, but lightly, and stepped in closer so their footsteps left a tight trail. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I already know what.’

‘Mummy and me?’

‘The minefield.’

Tom stopped, putting his hand to Charlie’s shoulder, as if checking the boy was really there. He was so small and his shoulders slight. His seriousness was too serious. Too serious for his age.

‘It wasn’t that clever,’ Tom said.

Charlie stepped away, instantly hurt.

‘I knew what I was doing,’ he said tightly. ‘Felix said it was very clever. He said you had to be like me and him to work it out.’

‘Work what out?’

‘Where to put your feet. Weeds dislike growing on mines and grass looks weaker. The sun makes bigger cracks where earth covers metal. He said working that out was clever.’

‘You really knew?’ Tom said.

‘I told you.’

‘What if you were wrong?’

‘Then I wouldn’t be here. I used to think I wouldn’t mind that. After Becca died. When you and Mummy … Now.’ Charlie wiped his eyes and Tom pretended not to notice.

They walked, because that was why they were there. In silence mostly, because their conversation was done and neither of them were the kind of people who chatted. The yachts still twinkled on the horizon and stars glittered high and bright. The lilt of a steel drum began behind the palm trees, its notes liquid and unearthly.

Charlie sat, when Tom suggested they sit.

‘Look,’ the boy said suddenly. He bent to retrieve the skull of a bird from the foot of some twisting mangrove roots. Tom stopped him.

‘I’ll do it,’ Tom said.

For a second the bleached bone felt hot.

‘Can I?’ Charlie asked. He stroked the skull as gently as if the bird was still alive. ‘How do you think it got there?’

‘Probably fell from here.’ Very carefully, Tom put the skull back into a triangle formed by three roots that crossed in front of a sandstone boulder. The skull looked right there. It belonged.

‘Ribbons,’ Charlie said.

Tom looked at the rags tied to the roots, and at the blackish smears on the rock face behind, some faded, some fresh.

‘Paint,’ Charlie said. ‘Why would people do that?’

‘I think it’s an altar.’

‘There isn’t a cross.’

‘A different kind of altar.’

The boy’s eyes widened. ‘Black magic?’

‘Charlie. Who’s been telling you about that?’

‘We do spooky stories at school. Ghosts, demons, werewolves.’

‘This isn’t that,’ Tom said firmly.

Where he diverged from other padres was in his willingness to believe there might be lesser gods; hundreds, perhaps thousands. He’d met a few. At least, he believed he had. Some good; some substantially less so.

‘Look,’ Tom said. ‘I’ve been away too much and it made Mummy unhappy. I got cross because she was unhappy.’

‘And she got cross with you?’

‘We’re trying to make it better.’

The boy leant in, Tom’s arm went round his shoulder and they sat together in as much silence as the crickets, the lapping waves and the steel drum allowed. Out on the horizon a liner moved like a drifting star. Tom was on the point of suggesting they go back when Charlie said, ‘Do you think Mummy would let me go to another school?’

‘You don’t like St George’s?’

‘It’s a very good school,’ Charlie said carefully. ‘It’s just not a very nice one. And I’m not very happy there. I’d like to go somewhere else, if I’m allowed.’

‘I’ll talk to her,’ Tom said.

‘Promise?’

‘Anything else?’

‘Life’s a minefield, Felix said. People like us pick their way through.’

Tom hugged his son tight. ‘It’s my job to worry,’ he said. ‘It’s practically compulsory.’

Caro was in the foyer, her hair exactly as it had been before they left, and whatever she’d been preparing to say about how late they were went unsaid when she realized Tom and Charlie were holding hands.

6

Breakfast at the Hotel Splendide was served under an awning on a patio overlooking the beach as tiny birds hopped between tables to pick at crumbs. ‘So beautiful,’ said Caro, finishing her coffee. ‘What do you think this place used to be?’

‘A slave plantation,’ Tom said.

Charlie put down the postcard he was writing.

‘Is that a guess?’ Caro asked her husband.

‘No. There’s a sanitized history in the men’s loo complete with old photographs. Faithful black servants born the children of slaves, etc. Men working cane presses, stripped to the waist. Women cutting sugar cane, ditto …’

‘Anna’s black,’ Charlie said.

‘Your friend from the beach? Half black,’ Caro corrected.

‘She says she’s black,’ Charlie said firmly.

Tom smiled despite himself. ‘She can be what she wants.’

‘Can I be anything I want?’ Charlie asked.

‘Yes,’ Tom said, before Caro could disagree.

‘Yes?’ she said.

‘He can be anything he wants.’

Caro smiled. ‘Within reason.’

‘I’m not sure reason has anything to do with it.’

‘Maybe not,’ she said, but her voice was kind, and she went back to her novel and was quickly lost in its hero’s search to discover which of fifty parrots had been the one to sit on Flaubert’s writing desk.

‘Is your book good?’ Charlie asked.

She answered without looking up. ‘It’s interesting.’

Charlie raised his eyebrows and returned to his lock, which he could now open without looking. In fact, that seemed to make it easier. Dipping into his pocket, Tom produced a shiny brass padlock and Charlie grinned.

‘Where did you get that?’

‘I asked the hotel to buy it for me. There’s no window in the side though.’

‘I don’t need one,’ Charlie promised.

Charlie took the lock, turned it over in his hands and, absent-mindedly, and entirely without knowing he was doing it, began humming the song they’d heard sung to the steel drums.

The poor cook got the fits,

Throw away all of my grits,

Captain’s pig done eat up all of my corn.

Let me go home, I want to go home,

I feel so break-up, I want to go home.

He reached for his pick with the ragged end, changed his mind and selected a simpler one. Noticing his father’s surprise, Charlie said, ‘Rakes are practically cheating. Like bump keys. Felix said so.’

‘Bump keys?’

‘They work. But that’s mostly luck.’

‘Luck is good.’

‘Skill is better,’ Charlie said firmly.

Out beyond the rocks, a catamaran was decanting sun-cooked tourists into a rubber dinghy, and conveying them ashore. Tom could think of nothing worse.

‘Major Fox?’

He looked up to see the hotel manager.

‘Is everything all right?’

‘This arrived for you, sir, from London.’

The man held a copy of that day’s Times.

A Foreign Office comp slip with Tom’s name and rank was stapled to the top. Looking up to thank the man, Tom discovered he’d gone.

Bomb attack in Beirut.

State of emergency in South Africa.

Interim report on the Challenger disaster, complete with pictures of the shuttle exploding. City of London to be deregulated …

Caro looked up from her Julian Barnes to find Tom scowling.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

‘This came for me.’

‘I didn’t know you could order The Times.’

‘You can’t,’ Tom replied.

Nine in the morning Grand Bahamas meant 2 p.m. in London.

Eight-hour flight time, an hour to get it delivered, perhaps an hour to get it biked out to Heathrow in the first place. Someone had acquired an early edition of the paper, put it on a plane at 0400, and arranged for its arrival to coincide with Tom’s breakfast.

‘Daddy,’ Charlie said.

The manager was back.

‘My apologies, there’s a Lord Eddington on the phone.’

Caro instinctively pushed back her chair and the man looked embarrassed. ‘He asked to speak to your husband.’

‘You’re sure?’ Caro said. ‘He’s my father.’

‘Quite sure, Madame. He definitely asked for Major Fox …’

Jack Grimwood

NIGHTFALL BERLIN

Epilogue

1

April 1972

2

3

1986, US Naval Base, Guantánamo, Cuba

4

5

Hotel Splendide, Grand Bahamas

6